The opportunity that is Education

I graduated from my first seventeen consecutive years of formal education with the traditional toss of the mortarboard. For the next twenty-five years I attended the occasional class to maintain my teaching credentials or other various certifications I possessed including those of a lifeguard and Red Cross Swimming Instructor. Recently, I re-upped my CPR certification and was excited to learn that the procedure had changed rather profoundly. Instead of laboring through chest compressions and head-tilt breathing and a confusing array of ratios for the two, depending on the age and size of the victim, it was simple. Chest compressions only to the tune of the Bee Gee’s “Staying Alive”. Anyone could remember that and this simple change had already increased the survival rate by almost 40%.

Last weekend I visited the new Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix. The MIM is the largest museum of its kind in the world and well worth the $15 admission fee. Housed in its 76,000 square feet are instruments from over seventy-five different countries spanning thousands of years. You can see the evolution of a simple single bowstringed stick to the modern stratocaster, and everything in between. Each exhibit includes an audio track that magically changes as you meander through the cavernous rooms. It is a musical education not to be missed.

I’ve spent fifteen weekends over the last year with a now twenty-month old little boy. When I first met Christopher, he was crawling. Now, of course, he races around everywhere and you try desperately to keep him from injuring himself. He is an only child of older, very educated parents. They have asked me to speak Spanish with Christopher. His mother has taught him sign language from his infancy. He is an absolute sponge, learning constantly, sometimes by trial and error himself, and sometimes very purposefully by an elder. Occasionally it will be six weeks between visits and I will be astounded at the change in this little Einstein. I look forward to true conversations with him in the not too distant future.

Thus my philosophy of education is that there is opportunity to learn something every day. More often than not, it is exploring the world around you and not the formal classroom that provides the education. I am saddened by the hours people spend in front of the television and ashamed at the content that passes for entertainment these days. Little wonder we sit 27th in the world in education these days.
Get out! Go someplace new! Get learning!